How to tweak a life …

I’m convinced one of the profound realities we will understand when this life is over and we stand before Christ is just how many lives we have tweaked in a negative way.

That’s because it’s fairly common for us to offer our judgments of others without considering the impact of what we have to say on the lives of the people we’re sharing it with.

Albert Einstein once offered this great insight: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it’ll spend its whole life believing it is stupid.”

I’ve listened to thousands of people tell of their struggles, feelings of being lost, and sense being a complete failure, because someone of influence in their lives had, at some time, judged them by a standard that wasn’t meant for them.

Sometimes it’s the classic story of the father who wants his uncoordinated, artistic son to be the next great quarterback when the son would rather be off doing something creative. Such a scenario is the same as a fish trying to climb a tree.

When we attempt to saddle others with our expectations of who we think they should be, and how they should be, we often contribute to their feeling stupid for being a fish who cannot climb a tree.

How are you tweaking the lives in which you have influence?

Scotty